Food Stamp Officials Exaggerate Meal Costs

All for the sake of hiking funding, of course

As the son of a widow, and as a person who once ate on far less than a food stamp budget, I am amused by the wealthy, privileged progressive officials who make it sound like they can't eat properly on $5 a day. You can find such people featured in a Washington Post story yesterday entitled "Montgomery Officials Try Eating for $5 a Day." Supposedly, they are doing this in "an attempt to simulate" life for participants in the federal food stamp program, which now has a "record" "46.2 million people" in it "at a cost of more than $70 billion." Are they really that bad at managing their money? It makes me wonder if some of them were born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

As a young lawyer, I consistently spent less than $5 a day on food — generally less than a dollar per meal — and managed to have a well-balanced diet including nutritious vegetables and healthy proteins. Indeed, in 2007, The Washington Post itself had a story in its health section about how various people, such as a chef and a natural foods store owner, were able to live quite well on a food stamps budget. For example, Rick Hindle, executive chef for the Skadden, Arps law firm, "showed recently that you don't have to spend hours in the kitchen to prepare healthful food for $1 or less per meal." You can easily spend less on food than the poorest food stamp recipients and still enjoy a healthy, low-fat diet rich in vitamins and fiber. That's what a Quaker vegetarian found when he decided to limit his weekly spending on food to a food stamp budget, even though he ate only organic food (which costs much more than typical food).